Our Coaching/Consulting Hybrid

Leaders interested in being coached usually work in a complex, competitive, and thus highly demanding environment. In a coach, they are looking for a dialog partner – someone they are unable or unwilling to find in their own environment, due to conflicting interests.

Specific Experiences

Executive sparring transcends the traditional concept of coaching. We are offering you a hybrid of professional coaching and an experienced former executive who stands on an equal footing with his coachee. “Equal footing,” in this context, means that your coach has mastered comparable scenarios in his own past – such as getting investments “past the board,” enforcing successful performance management in spite of “difficult” direct reports, giving one’s own career a “boost,” or turning an “involuntary move” into a success. The so-called “board smell” not only facilitates the first steps on a mental level but also in terms of content, since the commonality of experience quickly creates a deep mutual trust and understanding.

Typical Clients

of executive sparring regularly reflect, recognize a need for coaching on their own, and are proactive. It often happens that, after a few sessions, the question “What’s next?” comes up – and “next” may refer to the suitability of the career/life or business model for the “final third” of the career.

The coach will not contribute his own business and life experience without being prompted to do so, but both parties may suggest that it be integrated into the process at any given point. It is important to keep verifying continuously whether, for example, an option from the coach’s career experience is relevant to the coachee’s problem at hand. It will happen frequently that ideas and/or strategies are developed “on an equal footing,” based on input from both sides. Unlike in consulting, the responsibility for decisions remains entirely in the hands of the client.

Highly Individualized Procedures

There is no specific format for executive sparring. Our coach will adapt to your logistical challenges as much as possible. The frequency of the sessions will be as individualized as the scheduling. Unlike traditional coaching, for which monthly sessions are recommended, both longer and also much shorter intervals are feasible, e.g. when working on a larger “theme.”

Your contacts in this format are coaches who, in addition to having been trained conventionally as coaches according to international standards, also have had a career at the highest (C) level of management in internationally operating businesses.